A Grand Love Story
by EveryStorysALoveStory
Summary: When established star, Rachel Berry, moves into The Henderdale Estate Mansion, strange things begin to happen. It's not the first time that strange things have occurred there. But must strange be bad? What if strange leads to a grand love story?
1. Chapter 1

**Hello people *waves* so this is my first faberry fic, and I have never watched Glee (I'm doing great at convincing you to read this, aren't I?) LOL!**

**But I think I have a grasp on Rachel and Quinn that you will like. Quinn is awesome to write. You can go anywhere with her character and still have it ring true, if you are skilled enough. But anywho, I got the idea for this story from watching an episode of Beyond Belief: Fact Or Fiction.**

**It is basically a show that has actors act out stories - some supernatural and others that just leave you incredulous - and then you have to guess if the story was fact or fiction. You will never believe some of the stories that have actually happened in real life. I'm sure you can find some episodes on Youtube if you are interested in the show.**

**So yeah, this story is inspired by one of the stories on that show, which in fact turned out to be fact. The story was fact, and some of the themes from that story, in which I have incorporated into this fic, are considered supernatural by many. But it's actually not. I know this from personal experience. But I don't want to say too much and ruin the plot so...**

**Ps: And yes for you downtempo/trip hop lovers out there, the title of this fiction is inspired by the masterpiece that is Kid Loco's 'A Grand Love Story.' If you haven't heard it, check it out. It might be your thing. If not, we can still be friends, but on a probationary basis :P**

* * *

Chapter One

It was the kind of dream house that showcased in those upscale magazines, regal as the Queen's pearls themselves. Akin to mountains, rose the swirling black metal that comprised Henderdale Estate's entrance gates, trimmed in gold that winked at all those that were privileged enough to pass by.

Rachel Barbra Berry clasped her hands together, and rested them against her heart, a star's twinkle of a smile gleaming from her perfect white teeth as she gazed up at the mansion that now belonged to her. The house dwarfed her five foot two stature in a way that may have been intimidating to anybody else that had just moved out of their parent's house, their childhood home. But to Rachel Berry, a woman who had long ago accepted that she was destined for loneliness, the mansion that looked like it could have been the giant from Jack and the Beanstalk's home, was a comfort, a dream realized.

To hell with all of those rumors about the place; the moment Rachel had first stepped into the house, something about the warm cherry wood and cream decor had encircled her in a hug, drawing her in, making her feel at home without even having to offer her a nice cold beverage to combat the sweltering sun's glare.

"Maybe we should stay with you the first night, huh honey?" Leroy suggested, wringing his hands as he watched his only daughter flit about the spacious master bedroom in haste to put away clothes, and position her heavy awards about the plush dresser's surface.

He was immensely proud of his twenty-six-year-old daughter. She was the most beautiful thing that he'd ever had such a role in molding. Luxurious waves of praline hair - parted at the middle - rivered past her tan chin, swimming about her shoulders. Plump full lips facilitated each one of those loquacious rants that she was known for. Dark and soulful eyes adorned her features, kissed and seared everything that they focused upon. She'd also achieved the acting and singing career that she'd always tirelessly pursued. Leroy was so proud. Even a childhood marred by bullying hadn't been able to hold her back, nothing had. She was that kind of woman. The things that she'd endured at the hands of her high school tormentors would have seen anybody else with an anxiety disorder.

Not his Rachel.

Leroy was so proud. But, as he looked around the master bedroom, something wasn't sitting right. His anxious hands parted at once, one hanging by his side, the other slowly creeping up to palm the back of his neck. He rubbed, back and forth. "Rachel, honey..." he trailed off, seeing that it was futile to keep on in that moment.

Hiram breezed into the room with more bags of Rachel's clothing a few seconds later. "Whew," he panted, dragging the back of his hand across the crystal capsules of sweat that had broken out of his now clammy forehead. "Where are the straight men when you need them, huh?" A lethargic but mirthful smile elongated his lips.

Rachel closed her closet doors gingerly and smiled fondly over at her daddy, as she bent to untie and riffle through the next bag of clothes.

"You should have just hired moving men, like everybody else does, instead of trying to give your poor father's heart failure," Hiram went on, dramatics and all.

"I think you'll find that with employing moving men, comes the sixty-percent chance of more than twenty-percent of your belongings being damaged, or broken. I researched it," she mumbled from inside of the bag.

"Of course you did, honey," her daddy drawled humorously. Looking away from his daughter, his gaze fell upon his husband, Leroy. The man seemed tense. More tense than when he'd thought that Hiram had given his Prada winter collection away to Good Will. "Baby?" Hiram probed, a new crumple to his brow.

Leroy just came out with it. "I don't think we should leave her here alone tonight. You've heard the rumors just as well as I have."

Hiram scoffed, waving his husband off with a limp flick of the wrist, before ambling over to the queen-sized bed and collapsing on it to give his tired feet a breather. The springs in the mattress barely bounced. It was firm, just like how he preferred his men.

Leroy rolled his eyes, and folded his arms. "There you go again, trivializing my concerns, as if they mean nothing." A click of the tongue further painted his indignation.

Hiram suddenly sat up and regarded his husband, eyes wide. "What on earth are you talking about?"

"You don't listen to me, Hiram!"

That snatched Rachel's attention. She became vertical, a pair of her shorts hanging off of her head, like a loosely placed wig on a mannequin. "What in Barbra's name is going on?" she asked loudly, glancing wide-eyed between the two men that had raised her.

"I think that your father and I should spend the night here," Leroy replied, tone strong like Russian coffee. "I don't like the idea of my only daughter being alone in such a big house. Anything could transpire, especially when you consider those rumors!"

Rachel softened her features, touched by her dad's endless concern for her. She walked over to him, shorts still adorning her head, and circled her arms around his broad shoulders in a tight hug. Her eyes were closed as she soaked up Leroy's love for her, and they even affectionately rocked side to side in their embrace. "Thank you for your concern, father, but you are going to have to acclimatize to the idea of me living here by myself sooner or later," she hushed out. "With regards to those rumors," she added, gently pulling out of the embrace to smooth her hand down the ruffled chest of her dad's shirt, "they are just that. Rumors."

"Exactly," Hiram said, now folding his arms pettily. "So somebody was murdered here. Doesn't mean that this place is haunted. In fact, it was a man that got murdered. All of those rumors report a sighting of a blonde woman, whom has no face."

"I don't care," Leroy countered. "The fact that anything was reported at all is an issue for me, not to mention that this place attracts ghost hunters and all those wanting to check out the validity of those rumors."

"That is what the security system on the gates and the house is for, dad," Rachel softly attempted to placate. "And if there are any spirits lingering here, maybe I'll get them to toast to me moving in."

Leroy peered down into those soulful brown eyes, and asked, "are you _sure_ you don't want our company tonight?"

Somewhat relieved that her father seemed to be relenting, Rachel beamed a sure smile up at him and nodded, before pecking his cheek.

* * *

All the clocks in the house read ten minutes past ten, and darkness was eating through the skies that billowed over Henderdale Estate.

With a drawn out yawn, Rachel slumped even further down into her plush new sofa, the television flickering images before her drooping eyelids. After her fathers had left - Leroy reluctantly - it had taken two more hours to finally find a home for the remaining bags of clothing, and now fatigue was eating into her, misting her mind.

It didn't pain her anymore, being alone. God, or whatever was out there, had given her more than her fair share of gifts in life; her successful career in the entertainment industry, two loving and supportive fathers when her mother had decided that she didn't want her, her health, her talent, and her wealth. So what if she didn't have any real friends? She was content with the many acquaintances that filled her phone book.

Just as her eyelids closed, the television flashed to a black screen, then silvery grey static.

Rachel startled awake, eyes wide. She stared at the plasma television, rarely blinking in case she missed something. Every detail pertaining to those rumors that circulated Henderdale Estate jetted her mind, and the hair on the back of her neck spiked. "H-Hello?" she called out, glancing over the back of the sofa to find nothing out of the ordinary.

The silence was deafening enough to blow the most quality speaker system, and the air crackled, charged with something that Rachel could not see but knew was there.

She pushed the remote control out of her lap, and warily stood up, glancing around the vast living room.

"Is somebody there?" she called out again, the timbre of her voice bouncing around the room.

Silence answered louder than ever, and the feeling that fills one when a spider escapes engulfed the star's five foot two frame.

A quite metallic noise then made itself known, and Rachel heard something in her neck crack with how fast she whipped her head around in the direction of the sound.

It was the television - the silver bolt in the wall bracket that held the television up on the wall, to be more specific.

Rachel pinned it with her gaze, squinting and becoming saucer-eyed in intervals at the sight of the bolt seemingly unscrewing itself. "Surely this in not truly happening," she muttered, gaping.

Sure enough, the bolt fell to the floor with a metallic clink, rolling from side to side before coming to what seemed like an unnatural halt, as if a foot had stopped its movement.

The television remained fixed up on the wall, thanks to the many other bolts holding it up in place, but that was not the point.

Horrified, Rachel stood frozen. The only thing that moved was her trembling fingers. For the very first time in her life, words eluded her. Basic bodily functions like breathing also eluded her, erratic gusts of air caught up in her lungs, suffocating her without her knowledge.

Then it happened; the thing that would change the way that she saw life forever. Stood over by the television, was a formally dressed woman. Her golden stream of hair was combed back in a severe bun, the kind that tugged at the scalp and made it sore; her alabaster hand almost arrogantly poised on her hip.

"What are you looking at?" the woman haughtily asked, one of the perfectly crafted eyebrows that framed her intense viridian and amber-flamed hazel eyes arching up. "This is my home, not yours. If anybody should be giving anybody a look, it's me."

Rachel, without even knowing it, began to take slow but clumsy steps backwards, until the edge of the cherry wood bar top sliced into her hip. She immediately hissed as pain spread, like furious fire, throughout the trunk of her body, causing her to sink to her hands and knees. Silent tears vanished into the floor, the pain becoming too much.

"If you make it to your senior years, that's going to come back to haunt you," the formally dressed woman said, her heels clicking silently against the floor as she began to approach the wounded brunette.

Pain be damned, Rachel scrambled up to her feet, holding onto chairs and other fixtures and fittings to keep herself upright. "W-What is it t-that you want?" she spluttered, still backing away from the entity.

"What is it that you are so afraid of?" the woman's smoke-silk voice husked, a tinge of menace laced through it. "Could it be that you know about..." She allowed her words to hang in the air for a moment, an evil smile blossoming into her hauntingly beautiful face. "Could it be that you know about me murdering my husband here?"

Rachel's back thudded a wall, her heart elbowing her rib cage as though it wanted to be free. This was it, Rachel was convinced. She was going to die. Just twenty-six-years-old, and she was going to die.

"Well," the woman began, taking another step forward, so that she was face to face with the clearly frightened celebrity, "he's not here anymore. I sent him to hell, watched faceless ghouls drag his soul down to the fiery depths."

Rachel felt no warmth radiating from the entity's body, no draft either. That was the last thought that she had before everything faded to black.

* * *

**Any thoughts? Eager for more? Bored?**


	2. Chapter 2

**Hello again, people. Thank you for the interest in this fic so far. I know that the first chapter didn't contain much, but hopefully this one will draw you in a little more. Thank you to those who reivewed and followed and favorited. I hope you continue to enjoy this :D**

* * *

Chapter Two

Leroy clicked his tongue and pressed the hang-up button, tossing his useless cell phone to the bedside table. "She's not picking up."

"Perhaps she's enjoying a luxurious bath in her luxurious new home, and she can't hear her phone," Hiram replied from the en suite doorway, just off of their bedroom.

Unconvinced, Leroy threw the duvet back, the cold air rushing into the hair populating his tan chest. "I'm going to check on her."

"Are you serious?"

When Leroy, all disheveled but dressed nevertheless, breezed out of the room and pounded downstairs, Hiram received his answer. "Wait, I'm coming too!" he whined.

* * *

The clinical smell that always swirled around in hospitals was the first thing that welcomed Rachel back to the world of the conscious, when her eyelids wearily fluttered open.

"Rachel!" Hiram cried at the sight of those soulful but tired brown eyes. He clasped his palms over his heart, relieved. "How are you feeling, sweetie?"

Rachel glanced around the small room, felt the mattress beneath her body, the cold crisp sheets surrounding her. Then she sighed and looked to her daddy, croaking out, "how did I come to be here, in hospital?"

"Your father and I called you last night, and there was no answer. So we drove to Henderdale Estate to check up on you. When we entered your living area, we found you... heaped on the floor." He cast his eyes down, fighting tears, as the terrifying memory seized hold of his heart all over again. "I thought you were..."

Rachel mustered the strength to place her hand over her daddy's, which was resting atop the clinical white sheets. "I saw her," she whispered, and he lifted his head to meet his daughter's sincere gaze.

But before any more discussion could fall between them, the door swished open, Leroy walking in with two cups of coffee in hand.

Rachel watched the wisps of steam from the cups swim up to the ceiling and vanish. She questioned if they were real, questioned where they had vanished to.

The moment Leroy saw those eyes he'd missed so much, his expression crumpled like newspaper stuffed in new shoes, tears glistening in his eyes. "Rachel," he whispered, quickly placing the cups of coffee down on a nearby chest of drawers, before kneeling beside the bed. "What happened?"

Rachel swallowed, looking between her two fathers. "I saw her," she repeated. "I saw her face. I-I was," she gulped, "terrified."

"The doctors said that you had a mild heart attack," Hiram revealed tearfully.

Rachel frowned. "But I do all of the right things. I nourish my body with all of the right nutriments, and I workout frequently. It is inexplicable that I would suffer a heart attack - mild or otherwise - at twenty-six-years-old."

A slight smile tugged at Leroy's lips. There she was, the daughter that he knew and loved.

Hiram's eyes flickered with flames of panic at the sound of his daughter working herself up. "Please, honey, calm down. I don't want you to stress yourself, especially after what your body has just been through."

Rachel smiled apologetically.

"When you say that you saw _her_, Rachel, what exactly do you mean?" Leroy asked.

"The blonde woman," she instantly answered, life slowly seeping back into her. "She spoke to me, informed me that she had murdered her husband in the house and sent him to hell. I-I injured my hip in my stunned yet frightened stupor." Slowly pulling back the sheets, she bunched her hospital gown up, and peered down at the yellowing bruise that marred the tan flesh around her hip area like Asia on a map, before she let the thin material fall back against her body.

"M-Maybe you thought you saw something -" Hiram began, promptly snapping his mouth shut at the glare he received from his husband.

The three of them sat there in silence for a few minutes, each digesting the situation.

"As soon as I arrive home, the very first thing that I will do is research, extensively, about the history of that mansion. The blonde woman; she must have a name," Rachel suddenly said, adopting her usual manner of determination.

"Excuse me?" Leroy erupted.

"Honey, you just had a heart attack," Hiram stressed to her. "I'll be damned if you ever step foot in that place again."

"Would you stop telling her that she had a heart attack, Hiram?" Leroy scolded. "She went into cardiac arrest. There is a vast difference."

"Whatever, she's not going back to that house!"

Feeling outnumbered, Rachel adopted a tone of absolute confidence. "If I venture to learn about her, to learn her name, then perhaps she'll leave if I ask her to. Henderdale Estate is my home now, and it will remain that way if I have anything to say about it. I didn't let those bullies run me out of high school, and this will be no different."

Even in the moment that she was defying his wishes, Leroy was proud of his daughter.

Seeing that look on his husband's face, Hiram knew that he was going to have to be the bad cop. "The last time you saw this... thing, you went into cardiac arrest," he raised his voice. "You just told us you were terrified. You are not going back there."

A sigh fell past Rachel's plump lips. "Yes daddy, the initial shock saw that I ended up in hospital. But now I am aware that it is possible for spirits to exist. Yes, I was terrified. But I truly do not think that it was the fear so much as the blow that my belief systems took, that sent my heart into cardiac arrest. It is settled; as soon as I am released, I am going home, alone."

"What kind of parents would we be if we just allowed you to go back there?" Hiram whined.

"The kind that trust their adult daughter to make her very own decisions."

Neither Leroy nor Hiram could say anything to that...

* * *

A week trudged by before Rachel was released from hospital, her health restored.

The media, as it is known to, somehow learned of her trip to the hospital, publicizing it for the world to devour over morning coffee, eggs and bacon. There had been a slew of photographers and reporters crowding her and her fathers, pointing microphones and cameras at them as the Berry's escorted their daughter home. Hiram had slapped one of the microphones to the asphalt.

Rachel was nothing if not a determined soul, and just as she'd explained to her two very reluctant fathers, she had headed straight for her laptop the very moment that she had gotten home.

Up in her room is where she'd settled, a sea of lilac duvet surrounding her limbs as she tapped the name of her mansion into Google.

After hitting enter, the first search engine results page flooded the laptop's screen, projecting a bright light onto her face in the dimly lit room.

_The Henderdale Estate Tragedy_, read the very first result, followed by others that hinted at other tragedies - other deaths - that had taken place in the mansion.

She quickly clicked that first link, and an entire website - a little cheap-looking, but there nevertheless - loaded. There were ads marring every corner of the page, windows popping up to the forefront of the screen without her consent. If she hadn't known any better, she would have concluded that the website was haunted too. As she scrolled down the page, copious amounts of text, separated up by photos of various blonde women that had lived in the mansion over the years, revealed itself.

Rachel instantly recognized the photo of the smiling blonde woman in the middle of the page.

Dark and determined eyes pawed meticulously over every word underneath the picture, from start to the copyright date and act at the bottom of the page.

"Lucy Fabray," Rachel muttered, tasting the name on her tongue and lips, trying to make it fit with the apparition that she'd seen downstairs. But something tasted off, and it wasn't purely down to the fact that the website had said that Lucy Fabray had changed her name after moving out of the mansion, after murdering her abusive husband, Noah Puckerman.

What was peculiar was that according to the website... Lucy Fabray - or whatever she'd changed her name to - was alive.

"Surely this information cannot be correct," Rachel whispered, clicking the back button to find a more reliable source. But each website that had anything to say about the most recent Henderdale Estate tragedy, confirmed that this Lucy Fabray lady was very much alive. One even mentioned that the beautiful blonde apparition was now thirty-one, after having spent a mere five years in prison for the murder of Mr. Puckerman, who had been every bit as on trial as Lucy had been when she'd tearfully taken the stand, back in 2006, and described the various different methods in which her then husband would use to torture and abuse her.

Rachel, for the second time in her life, was at a loss for words. Closing and pushing her Samsung laptop aside, she concluded that she _had_ seen the very same woman whose angelic photo had stared at her from that first website, and so had plenty of others, if the rumors were anything to go by. On Barbra Streisand's name, she had seen Lucy, and she had seen her face to confirm it. That much was certain.

So then what in Barbra's name was going on?

"I thought I'd killed you," came a smoke-silken voice from the doorway.

Eyes alert and perfectly round; Rachel jumped, instantly pinning the woman in the doorway with a curious gaze.

"Let's face it," Lucy, as Rachel had come to learn, said whilst walking over to the window. "Murder's not exactly out of my character, is it?" She didn't once turn around to face the woman that she had sent to hospital over a week ago. Her blonde hair held a ponytail this time, less severe than the bun. But her attire remained stern; a form-accentuating grey skirt that stopped just short of her shapely porcelain calves, and a delicate cream blouse that ran around her breasts, shoulders, and streamline stomach in sycophant-like compliment.

Finding her words, Rachel pounced. "It is to my understanding, Lucy Fabray, that you are not a spirit, or a multi-dimensional being, since you are still alive. So then, if you wouldn't mind clarifying, what form of being are you?"

A chuckle, seemingly sultry in nature, bounced Lucy's shoulders. "Somebody's done their research," she sang.

Rachel nodded. "I always take the time to," she responded without delay, without thought.

"Of course you do," Lucy chuckled cryptically, before: "We are all spirits, Rachel Berry. These bodies we have? They're just the space suit. Electromagnetic transmitter receivers." She slowly, almost seductively, dragged the pad of her index finger along the vast window ledge. "These electromagnetic transmitter receivers are how we touch, how we smell, how we see, how we hear." She paused at that, and then turned around in one perfect charismatic motion, fixing Rachel with her hazel pearls. "How we taste," she finished, through a small smirk. "How we interact with this reality. When we die, we shed the space suit, and leave it behind."

"How do you know my name?" Rachel asked.

"Doesn't everybody?"

Stumped by that one, the singer and actress repeated, "what are you?"

Lucy let her pale eyelids fall shut, breathing out, "I'm asleep."

A frown captured Rachel's tan forehead, before her eyebrows shot up in realization. "A-Are you in some sort of coma, and in need of my help? I'll assist you in any way that I can, if that is the case."

"So generous. After I made you faint, one would think that you'd be seeking to get rid of me," Lucy said with a smile, as she opened her eyes. "Of course, I didn't intentionally seek to harm you. You did that all by yourself, Rachel. Nobody will ever do anything to you, unless you allow it. Took me a dangerously long time to learn that." With that said, Lucy walked towards the bed, and Rachel's knuckles blanched with her tightening grip on the duvet.

She had been keeping her fear at bay, overriding it with her inherent need for answers, with her innate curiosity.

"Stop being afraid. Your root chakra glows dark red when you're scared. Reminds me of all that blood, when I put those three bullets in my husband," Lucy scolded, sitting at the foot of the bed.

Rachel felt the bed sink with the additional weight, saw the duvet lines scurrying away from where Lucy was seated. The sight only caused her fear to spike, because if Lucy was solid, then there was a possibility that the dubious woman could physically harm her.

"Promise me that you're not going to inflict bodily harm on me," she squeaked out, shrinking into her shoulders, and drawing her knees up to her chin.

Lucy smirked. "I could. I could kill you, and everybody would just think that the Illuminati had gotten you for disobeying them."

Rachel kicked her legs straight, outraged at the insinuation. "I will have you know that whilst, yes, there are certain celebrities that have achieved fame through being Illuminati puppets, **I** worked hard for what I have! I have the singing and acting career that I've always desired because I systematically attained each goal that I set for myself and earned it, not because I signed a contract in my own blood, or sacrificed anybody in a ritual. In fact," Rachel panted, having worked herself up to the point of almost being short of breath, "you may take a look at some of my music videos - they're just over there in the box that I had planned on unpacking before I went into cardiac arrest."

When Lucy merely stared calm amber and viridian hues at her, clearly making no attempts to move, Rachel pointed towards the large box containing the DVD's of her many music videos. "Go and put one in the DVD player! You will witness for yourself that I have no Satanic symbolism in any of my videos! They are mildly seductive, because they insist that sex sells, but that is it!"

Lucy, still making no strides towards satisfying Rachel's suggestion, ran her glistening pink tongue out over her lips. "As a matter of pure fact, you're pretty seductive right now."

At that, something that didn't take place very often happened; Rachel's face and neck area blotched in deep rashes of red. Her knees drew up to her chin once more, and she began shrinking back into her shoulders.

"If I had wanted to harm you, I already would have. You fainted right in front of me, and I didn't saw you into little pieces," Lucy added, glancing the pristine gold watch on her wrist, blasé. She then peered up, meeting Rachel's almost thoroughly concealed eyes through the petite woman's knees. "Why is your space suit blushing?"

"Y-You said that - never mind."

"I have to go, Rachel Berry," Lucy announced, standing up.

"Go?" Rachel spluttered, as if she didn't recognize the word. "Go where? If you are in fact alive, then you must live somewhere. Where is your home?" she rambled, scrambling up as though panicked at the prospect of Lucy leaving.

"This home is my home, right now. New York, Manhattan is my home the rest of the time, and The ReVulva Bar is home to my out-of-control ego. Goodbye." A delicate queen-like wave made a Mexican wave of Lucy's slender fingers, before each part of her, bit by bit, vanished into thin air.

Rachel must have watched the space where Lucy last stood for at least thirty-five minutes, and when she finally accepted that the woman was not going to return any time soon, the silence harpered its loudest yet.

* * *

Not a thing that Lucy Fabray had said had sunken in for Rachel, until the following morning.

The plane tickets to New York, Manhattan were booked by noon, as was the hotel booking, set in a location just a few minutes away from ReVulva, the bar that Lucy had mentioned the previous night. After doing a small amount of research into The ReVulva Bar, Rachel had come to learn of it as a lesbian nightclub that had the capacity to hold six-hundred at one time. The establishment also had four floors, each one offering a different genre of music to boogie to, as the tongue-in-cheek website had advertised.

It was settled.

Rachel would be leaving the following day.

Hiram and Leroy shared conspiratorial glances of incredulous in-between watching their daughter - not even a week out of hospital - race around her bedroom, stuffing clothes and other necessities into a suitcase.

This was ridiculous.

"Rachel, you can't just up and leave like this..." Leroy finally said, rubbing the back of his neck, back and forth, whilst wincing at the reaction that he was anticipating from the undeterred brunette.

Hiram nodded his strong jaw, in full support of his husband's words. "Your father is correct, honey. You can't possibly be doing this."

"Why not? I have achieved everything that I have ever set out to achieve, save the perfect relationship, and having my own group of friends. Also, I have made enough money to live off of for two more lifetimes, without ever having to work again. If there was ever a time to set off on an adventure, then it is certainly now." She swiftly and neatly closed the now full suitcase and zipped it closed, happily patting it once, before setting out in search of her passport.

Past experience had taught the Berry men that talking their daughter out of anything, once she had set her mind, was a impossible and futile task. Her obsessive personality made damn good sure of that. If she ever failed at anything, it was never because she hadn't given it her all.

Hiram sighed, not wanting to take it to the place that he was about to take it, but knowing he had to. "Rachel, you are going to New York to meet someone whose ghost has been haunting your house. Surely you must see how ridiculous that is. Not only that, but you also seem to have developed a slight infatuation with this apparition."

"Well, she flirted with me first! - last night, as a matter of fact. She let me know that she deemed me seductive, and I had never really paused to consider just how breathtaking her aesthetics were, until then. But she is by far the prettiest woman that I have ever seen, freakishly so."

"You do realize that for a ghost to exist, the person needs to be dead, right?" Leroy pleaded.

Rachel stopped darting around the room, her shoulders slumping, a pout forming.

"Exactly, honey," Hiram went on. "This isn't the first time that you've developed a completely irrational obsession. Remember Billy Halcastle?"

He had taken it there.

"Hiram!" Leroy warned.

"Well I'm just saying!"

"Silence!" Rachel yelled, and silence fell indeed.

Her fathers gulped.

She closed for eyes for a moment, drawing a breath and taking it to the soles of her feet, before steadily blowing it out. "Lucy Fabray is alive. She's not yet deceased, yet she appears to me, and has appeared to many others that have seen her here, as an apparition. I apologize if that does not make sense to you. It makes very little sense to me. The idea is simply mashugana. But it is happening. I, for one, can attest to that. What are the chances of her flirting with me, and then mentioning a lesbian bar that is situated right in the middle of Manhattan, which is where she told me that she lives? I have never visited that part of New York, nor have I ever heard anything about a bar called ReVulva. How else would I have known all of that if Lucy's ghost was not real?"

"You could have read about this bar, or, or heard about it elsewhere, and maybe it was deeply buried in your sub-conscious, before it simply resurfaced last night," Hiram countered.

"I may be overzealous, but I am not crazy. I am going to New York to meet this woman, because this entire debacle has piqued my curiosity, and you know that once I have opened a good book, I must finish it. Call this trait of mine obsessive, or compulsive, if you must. But I _am_ going, daddy."

"If the media gets hold of this, they are going to make you look crazier than they did Michael Jackson," Leroy chimed in, as a last resort, but with much less fervor than his husband had employed.

Rachel took not a morsel of notice, and continued to attempt to locate her passport.

"Rachel, there is no way that you are _this_ desperate for companionship." Hiram snapped his mouth shut, instantly regretting what he had said. But as always, it was too late.

Rachel, with her passport now in hand, turned to him, glaring in a rare show of contempt.

"I'm sorry, honey," he instantly backtracked.

"You're sleeping on the couch tonight," hissed Leroy.

* * *

**Are you ready to go on an adventure with Rachel? This is so much fun to write. Tell me what you thought, if anything at all :)**


	3. Chapter 3

**I'm back again with a longer chapter. Will Rachel find Lucy/Quinn? :)**

**Disclaimer: There are vague mentions of rape and abuse in this chapter, and there could be from here on out in this story.**

* * *

Chapter Three

Rachel had spent her flight pondering her daddy's cruel words, and even when a sprightly group of aspiring singers had begged her for her autograph and a picture, she still could not think of anything else, even as she gave a show smile for the excited man's camera.

_There is no way that you are this desperate for companionship._

The sentence did tumultuous flips around her mind until the end of the flight, and by the time she was settled in her plush Manhattan hotel room suite, it had transformed into: _You cannot possibly be this pathetic, Rachel. Your father and I are so ashamed of you. Why can't you meet people and form bonds in a normal manner?_

To the melancholic tune of her sniffles, tears spilled and padded softly into the majestic bed covers, as Rachel realized that she _was_ all those things that her daddy had said.

Desperate.

Pathetic.

Not normal.

An embarrassment in some ways.

She'd never had a boyfriend, and the one boy that she had ever taken any sort of an interest in, whilst she was still in high school, turned out not to be the vampire that she had convinced herself he was. Billy Halcastle had always carried an umbrella around with him on the sunniest of days, and he would take out this flask of deep crimson liquid at lunch, every day. She never saw him eat normal food. Nobody did. She had known because she had conducted a questionnaire on it, and passed it around.

One of Billy's incisors was also eerily sharp, apt for sinking into human flesh.

So naturally, Rachel had thought him a vampire. She'd become obsessed with trying to out him for it too, following him to and fro, in an effort to expose him, and earn the title of Mckinley High hero. She'd gotten it into her head that the bullying would stop then.

As a result, Billy had moved schools because of her, but not before bitterly explaining away every one of her pieces of 'evidence' as to why she knew he was an undead blood sucker.

She'd never had anybody express appreciation for her in a romantic sense, until she had blown up and stormed the entertainment industry with her voice and acting talent. But even then, those men had been mere perverted sleazes that had just wanted what was in her panties. Nothing more, and nothing less. She was still a virgin, save inserting tampons, and the odd masturbation session, and how she was tired of not knowing how it felt to be touched by another. How she was tired of having no real friends. The silence tortured her. It was how she'd learned to belt out those notes with such power and volume when she was younger - because she had to figure out a way to combat the silence.

Lucy had said one flirtatious thing to her, and that combined with the spirit's beauty and seductive manner, had caused Rachel to feel... something that she'd never felt before.

"Maybe you are desperate," she mumbled grumpily, huffing a sigh whilst falling back onto the bed.

Slowly but surely the tears mopped themselves dry, staining her cheeks and stealing their suppleness. Then her eyes fell softly, sleep enveloping her.

* * *

Quinn's feet slurred out of the nightclub, the kind Manhattan air sticking to her pale and sweaty forehead in much the same way as her disheveled moisture-darkened bangs. She let the jagged brick wall of the establishment hold her up, feeling the thump thump of the music inside vibrate through her as she leaned her head back, and just breathed, open-mouthed. In and out. In and out.

"You look beat, Q," came Santana's silky but somewhat deep voice.

Quinn merely side-eyed the beautiful tan Latina, before pointedly pushing away from the wall, and standing on her own two feet. She could hold herself up, no matter how much reality swayed before her eyes. "Yeah?" she said, pulling out a cigarette and sparking up.

"Yeah," Santana took great pleasure in confirming.

"And still I'm the most desirable broad in this place. That _must_ be killing you."

Santana stood beside the blonde, quiet with her grudgeful smirk, because she couldn't disagree, unfortunately.

Quinn slipped her lighter back into her pocket, held her head up, and blew attractive swirls of smoke from the most sought after lips in the Manhattan lesbian scene.

"Maybe you should take your ass home," suggested the dark-eyed Latina.

A one syllable mirthless bark of laughter gruffed from Quinn. "I bet you'd just love that; not having to wait until I've rejected the prettiest girls before you can take a crack at them."

Santana deadpanned, suddenly severely unamused. "Fuck you! - How old are you again?"

Quinn grinned around another drag.

"That's right; too old to be hitting the clubs, trolling for pussy every night of the week," the shorter woman snarked. "Take your tired ass the fuck home. You can barely stand."

Quinn shook her head, soft but defiant, later gesturing for Santana to take a drag of her cigarette. But the exotic raven-haired woman declined.

"I suspect that we were good friends in a past life," Quinn slurred sagely.

Santana quirked a suspicious eyebrow at the blonde, and folded her arms against the picking-up breeze. "We're good friends in this life, Ghandi."

"I mean without the bullshit competition that you always seem to be in with me." Quinn chuckled like a wise old woman, side-eyeing the other woman again. "When are you going to learn that you will _never_..." She left that hanging for quite some time, before adding: "Beat me?"

Santana faced the open street, rolling her eyes. "You're a fucking mess, Q. A beautiful mess, but still a fucking mess. That's where you can't hold shit to me."

Wearing a slight frown, that she took the time to carefully conceal in the shadow of the street lamp, Quinn flicked her cigarette butt into the distance, watching the amber hot-rock on the end of it diminish with every inch that it soared through the air. Santana was right. She was a mess, and everything was getting worse because whenever she lay her head down to get some sleep, she would never really get any sleep. It was happening every night these days, and her waking hours were often riddled with forgetfulness and confusion, and illness because of it.

Her open-minded psychiatrist, renowned for moonlighting in Spirit Science, had diagnosed that she was having out of body experiences during the time that her body and mind should have been using sleep to regenerate, which was why she was waking up exhausted, and sometimes with sore limbs.

Somehow, it was linked to the trauma that she'd suffered at Henderdale Estate, because that was where she most often remembered visiting in those hours when she should have been asleep.

"Wow, did I finally shut your arrogant ass up, once and for all?" Santana queried, somewhat smug, until she peered at her friend's side-profile.

Quinn's expression held no expression. Perfectly stoic, impressively so for somebody that had guzzled the amount of alcohol that she had. "It's happening more than ever." Her voice was calm - normal - given the subject matter.

"What about last night?"

"You know that really annoying, but totally fuckable actress-singer?"

"Hmm..." Santana hummed, snapping her finger, when the name finally occurred to her. "Berry? Rachel Berry?"

"Yeah," Quinn nodded, once. "She moved into Henderdale Estate just over a week ago. She's seen me, my face. She fainted the first time. That's why she was in hospital for a week."

Stood completely still, mouth slightly ajar, Santana just blinked. Over and over again.

Quinn sighed. "I tried to get some sleep yesterday afternoon, and ended up in her bedroom - in my old bedroom. She was there, sitting up in bed. She's also done research on me, called me _Lucy_ _Fabray_." She spat out the name like it had personally offended her. "I told her that I live in Manhattan, and about ReVulva. No doubt she's probably on her way here right this minute."

"Fuck," was all that Santana was good for in that moment. Maybe her friend's life was more of a mess than she'd initially thought.

"Up until now, it's just been rumors about a faceless blonde. Could've been some stuck up bitch that died in the Victorian era. But she saw my face, and she knows who I am - that I'm alive."

Santana suddenly frowned. "Wait, how are you so calm about this? Shouldn't you be avoiding this place in case she makes an appearance?"

Despite the precariousness of her situation, Quinn managed a smirk, because no matter what she always had her beauty, always had her charm. "If she shows up, I'll show her a good time. She'll be sprung, just like every other broad that's ever had me hit their G-spot, and she'll keep her mouth shut. The press that I got for shooting that asshole dead, was enough press to last me three lifetimes. I don't need any more fucking TV time. I just want a quiet life."

"Well if that fails, the media will just make out that she's even more bat-shit crazy than everybody already thinks she is," Santana pointed out, recalling something that she'd read about the star a couple of months back. "She's a freaking nut case, Q. Did you hear about how she set out to prove that some guy was a vampire in high school? 'Pparently, he had to move to a new town, 'cause the dwarfy little freak wouldn't quit following him around."

Staring off into the swaying street without blinking, Quinn lightly scolded, "leave her alone, S. She thought I was in a coma, and that that was why my 'ghost' was showing up. She told me she'd assist me in any way that she could, if I needed her help. Come to think of it, I might not have to screw her to get her to keep her mouth shut."

Santana rolled her eyes, ending it in a knowing smirk. "But you will anyway. Your inflated ego can't help itself."

A moment of silence misted around them, only dispersing when Santana suggested, "well maybe you should start popping some sleeping pills instead of all the E that you're usually high as a kite on."

"Maybe I will," was the vacant response.

* * *

At twelve-thirty in the afternoon, the following day, room service delivered a delicious vegan serving of noodles in peanut butter sauce to Rachel's room. The dish accompanied with it a modest bottle of red wine, which the star sipped from a flute glass whilst reading one of the romance novels that she'd packed in her suitcase.

After her little cry the previous night, Rachel felt renewed, sort of.

She gobbled down her food, diminishing her slight wine buzz with every bite, and then practiced her scales. Anything to combat the silence.

Once finished with her singing, she fished around in her stylish leather jacket, her fingers delving past at least four small bottles of alcohol hand sanitizer, before she felt the scratchy-in-texture piece of paper that she was searching for.

Pulling it out and running her hand over the creases repeatedly, she studied the picture that she had printed on it before she'd left Henderdale Estate to catch her flight. Lucy Fabray's picture. The fair-haired fair-skinned woman was so beautiful that Rachel almost wanted to dislike her for it. But the only emotion that ever raced to the forefront was curiosity. If she could not locate the mysterious woman, then she would ask around after her, showing the picture to those that were most likely to know of Lucy.

It was Friday, the day that caused most to breathe a sigh of relief once their nine-to-five was out. The day that sauntered into the weekend, and saw many retching up their dinner in nightclub stalls once night fell.

If Lucy Fabray was a regular at The ReVulva Bar, then Friday nights were perhaps guaranteed to see her dancing away on one of the establishment's four floors.

It was settled.

Tonight was the night.

* * *

The previously golden blue skies in Manhattan now billowed attractive scarlets and deep purples.

But as Rachel handed the cab driver his money with a shaky smile, and then stepped out of the vehicle, the blanket of vast beauty overhead went unappreciated.

She took a steadying breath that expanded her chest, blowing it free a moment later.

_The ReVulva Bar_, is what the intimidating building before her boasted in seductive swirling purple font. The V in the vulva was dotted in imitation of pubic stubble, a small vertical line splitting the V where its two diagonal lines met, simulating the vaginal slit.

Rachel might have deemed it clever if she had not palmed her blotching sternum, and flushed so hot at the sight of it.

Women, from all walks of life, strode up and entered the twinkling nightclub-bar, and with confidence and indifference that Rachel wished she possessed in that moment. Some of the women were holding hands, others patting their baggy jeans for ID, the minority already bobbing their heads to the bassy thump thump that pulsed out of the club and into the street.

"That's - look, that's Rachel Berry."

"Oh my God. Shit, it is."

"The fuck? When'd she come out?"

The hushed whispers instantly tugged the singer and actress out of her trance. She put on a big smile, giving the group of friends that the whispers had originated from a cheery little wave.

A few waved back, others just standing there with their jaws on the pavement.

"Dude, ask her for an autograph," came another shushed whisper.

"No! You ask," came the irritated response, accompanied by a testy tut of the tongue.

Rachel released a girly chuckle. She'd strived for this her entire life - to be recognized all over the world for her talent, for her celebrity. But it was always highly amusing to watch people's reactions when they saw her out and about, doing the very same mundane things that they, themselves, did.

"You guys are pathetic," one of the women chided, stepping forward, away from the safety of her friends. "Are you Rachel Berry?" she confidently asked, cocking her head to the side as if getting a look at the singer from a different angle would clear up all confusion.

Short black spikes, held together with an inordinate amount of hair gel, jetted out of her head, and her stocky frame and handsome looks were the nucleus of many lesbian stereotypes.

Nevertheless, Rachel nodded. "Yes. I am indeed Rachel Berry."

"Shouldn't you, like, have a ring of security guards following you around, or something?" one of the other women grew the courage to ask, though her voice remained hesitant. She had almost raised her hand to ask the question, causing her raven-haired girlfriend to nudge her in the side, and Rachel to let go of another chuckle.

"Whilst many other people that live their lives in the public eye may feel the need to parade around with body guards, I prefer not to. I am not a gangster, and so I do not feel as though my life or safety is too much at risk. I also value my privacy," Rachel replied.

"I'm Whitney," the woman with the spikey black hair announced.

"Nice to meet you, Whitney. I'm Rachel," countered the petite brunette celebrity.

It garnered a few laughs from the group of women, and that caused Rachel to smile in a way that only positive social interaction would.

"So as well as having such a voice, you're funny too," Whitney commented, a darkening grin beginning to surface out of her features. "How about you come inside, I buy you a drink, and we have a dance then, Rach?"

The sexual leer that Rachel was receiving from the butch woman span a web of uneasiness within her stomach.

How was she supposed to turn this woman down in an acceptable manner?

When the answer to her proposition didn't come, Whitney wriggled her eyebrows. "What do you say, sexy?"

"Well - I would like to thank you for the invitation -"

"But she's not interested, least of all in you."

At the very sound of the smoke-silk voice that had answered for her, Rachel instantly looked to her right, and there - in person - was Lucy Fabray.

In the flesh.

Plump lips opened, snapped themselves shut, and then opened again, dark and soulful eyes wide and gluttonous of the woman reflecting in them.

Lucy Fabray was indeed alive, a real person.

In the flesh.

But she was not dressed in the stern formal attire that the awe-struck brunette was accustomed to seeing her in. In place of the severe bun lay beautifully billowing golden waves of hair that sailed past Lucy's collar bone, a wooly beige beanie hat framing her porcelain face in a way that reminded Rachel of skateboarder teens. Where the crisp, cream, business-like blouse should have been, baggily hung a men's-sized, light-denim, button-up t-shirt, its smooth flattened collar calling sinful attention to Lucy's alabaster neck. And in place of the skirt were a pair of skin-tight blue skinny jeans, accentuated by the pair of sparkling white streamline sneakers that snuggled her feet.

"Screw you, Quinn. I saw her first!" Whitney snapped, stepping closer to the trance-induced star. She slid her arm around Rachel's petite shoulder, and promptly pulled her into her side.

Quinn? Who was Quinn?

It took all of two seconds for Rachel to register 'Quinn' as the name that Lucy must have taken after the murder of her husband.

With that settled in her mind, she went about discreetly attempting to uncoil herself from within Whitney's clutch, but the butch woman just held on tighter.

Rachel gulped.

Bored, Quinn slumped her shoulders with a sigh. She put one sneaker forward, and snatched the meaty wrist to the hand that clutched Rachel's shoulder, forcefully flinging it away. "Firstly, you wish you could screw me. Secondly, keep your bull-dyke mitts off of what's mine. You'll lower its appeal, just like you do everything else."

"Just leave it, Whit," one of the butch woman's friends advised.

"Fuck that," Whitney shouted, the veins in her creamy temples plumpening against her skin.

It was at that point that two bouncers stepped out of the club. Their serious eyes immediately found a tomato-faced Whitney, and they crowded her, threatening to ban her from ReVulva if her unsightly antics continued.

She eventually got so worked up that she burst through the two bouncers, thrust her boot into the establishment's brick wall, and stormed off down the street, her group of friends all rolling their eyes as they reluctantly followed after her.

"Wait up, Whit!"

"Whit, wait the hell up!"

Rachel had not removed her gaze from Quinn the entire time. "You're real," tumbled softly from her lips, almost a mesmerized whisper.

"Whoops, you got me," Quinn retorted, not a morsel of mirth about her serious amber-flamed hazel eyes.

Then just like that, Rachel was confronted with a view of the mysterious blonde's denim back as she swiftly began walking away from her.

"Hey!" Rachel whined, somewhat petulantly. She scurried after the taller woman, undeterred by the length of Quinn's strides in comparison to her own. She had determination on her side - something that no one could contend with, if past experience was anything to go by. "Excuse me! If you could just -"

"Quit following me, Berry."

"But - but I -"

Suddenly Quinn halted and whirled around.

With a yelp, Rachel crashed, forearms first, into her chest.

Deceivingly strong arms caught around the star's slender waist, steadying her, before retreating. "What do you want?" Quinn enquired through a curious squint, needing to know what the other woman's intentions were before she even considered talking to her.

With their faces mere strings apart, both could feel the other's warm breath against their skin, could see hidden beauty spots, and tiny faded scars. It was then that Quinn knew she'd end up sleeping with the tiny star, one way or another. Her ego could not help itself.

Rachel blinked, over and over. "I would simply like to talk to you, Luc - I mean Quinn. I merely want to understand what is going on."

Before she could check her ire and send it back to the hell from whence it came, Quinn was glaring down at Rachel, looming over her. "Don't ever call me that," she forced through caged white teeth.

Holding her palms up in immediate surrender, Rachel stepped back and nodded. "I apologize. Now that you have expressed your disdain for that title, I will not make the mistake of referring to you by that name again."

Ignoring the rambling, Quinn shrugged, repeating: "What do you want?"

The answer came in an instant. "For you to explain to me how it is possible for you to be standing here, very much alive, yet haunting my new home."

Porcelain nostrils flared, hoovering up a gust of air, then huffing it loose. "Ok," Quinn cautiously relented, looking the star up and down warily. "I don't make a habit of threatening women, but if any of this ever gets out, there's going to be a problem. _You're_ going to have an overwhelming problem on your hands. Is that clear?"

The entirety of Rachel's being lit up and buzzed with her satisfied grin. "Quite clear."

"Quite clear?"

"Crystal clear."

* * *

Rain had started to jet down, in ferociously large capsules, from the Manhattan skies just as Quinn and Rachel had turned the corner which led to the street that housed Quinn's apartment.

Now soaked all the way through to her black heels, Rachel sat at the mysterious blonde's small kitchen table, on a wooden chair that croaked every time she so much as breathed. Her eyes trailed around the dinky dark little kitchen, and she pondered the path that Quinn must have taken in order for her to have ended up where she had, when she had come from such an affluent past.

Alone, for the moment, Rachel huffed a couple of strands of her dripping tresses out of her mouth, and waited for the other woman's return.

Like clockwork, attractive pale feet strode into the room, pattering against the cold tile floor in a percussive melody that was just as pretty.

Rachel turned her head so that she could regard the other woman, when something white and soft in texture flew towards her, draping her face.

"Dry yourself off."

Spluttering, Rachel dragged the unexpected intrusion of material off of her face, and peered up at Quinn, who was now leaning up against a kitchen cupboard, sparking up a cigarette.

With the cigarette lit, and streams of grey puffing out of her mouth, Quinn returned the petite star's gaze. "It's clean," she verified with a roll of the eyes.

At that, Rachel tentatively began to towel her hair and face off. Flashbacks of having slushies tossed at her in the cruel hallways of Mckinley High, and having to scurry off to the nearest bathroom to clean herself up, plagued her. But she shook those memories off to say: "Those cancer sticks will negatively amend your life expectancy, you know."

Quinn rose an eyebrow, slow and measured. "_**I**_ could negatively amend your life expectancy right now. I'm a stranger, and you were foolish enough to come home with me."

Rachel could only nod, because the other woman had a point. Certain that the towel had absorbed as much water as it was going to, she placed it on the table, and clasped her hands. "Foolish of me, perhaps. But I do not feel as though you are a stranger, and I do not feel as though you will harm me."

She was right, Quinn concluded. She'd fuck the loquacious little woman over killing her every time, no exceptions.

"This is vaguely reminiscent of a conversation that we've had before," Quinn pointed out. She sucked on the dwindling cancer stick, and puffed ribbons of smoke from her nose. The grey swirls clouded her face momentarily.

"What are you?" Rachel finally just asked. She was never one for skirting around things that needed to be discussed.

"I'm a lot of things, Berry. Unattainable, on a vacation from work... a convicted murderer."

"I'm sorry that you had to endure the things that you did - that you felt that the only way out was to shoot your husband," Rachel offered softly. She could not fathom going through the stuff that Lucy had described when she had testified as a witness in her own murder trial, seven years ago.

Quinn chuckled, and it took the brunette right back to the first time that she'd ever seen the blonde in her living area. It was unsettling.

"Husband? That - whatever the fuck he was - was not my husband. He was my father all over again, but with the added tool of sex to abuse me with."

Rachel gulped.

"They forced me to be with him, to marry him when I told them I was into women," Quinn said, eerily calm - smug almost. "He thought that I would keep taking the bruises, the rape, the control." She inhaled another drag on her cigarette, her eyes sparkling with something that was happy but menacing, like a clown's smile. "So I loaded up his Beretta, waited for him to get home from work, and emptied a round into his repulsive head. _Pow_!" she whispered, firing the makeshift gun that she'd made of her thumb, index, and middle finger. "_Pow_! _Pow_!"

Rachel flinched in her seat, her mouth drying out considerably.

There had been a few rare instances in high school, when she had felt as though she should take the lives of those that tormented her. But, of course, nothing ever came of it. There was no way that she'd ever be able to kill someone, watch their soul still through their eyes, their fingers wiggle to a halt.

"You must have been terrified," she muttered.

"Not really. I was relieved." Quinn shrugged her one shoulder, and stubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray that sat on the work surface. "He was dead, my parents had died previously, and I was free to be what and who I wanted. Free to burn those fucking _ugly_ stepford wife clothes." She smirked at that little fact, because she hadn't been able to wait to burn those atrocities.

It had been the very first thing she did after staring, vacantly, at the undignified, startled-in-expression, corpse for quite some time.

"I told them my story in court, and they took pity on me, which is why I only got five years. Four-thousand dollars of therapy later, and here I am. Another success story," Quinn drawled sarcastically. "It's the stuff that the Lifetime Network makes movies of."

Another success story, except for the fact that her light body wouldn't stop returning to the scene of the trauma, to the scene of the crime.

"Why do you haunt my house?" Rachel finally just asked.

"I'm asleep. I'm asleep when you see me. Well, _trying_ to sleep," Quinn explained, deciding that she'd dragged this out long enough. "My psychiatrist says I'm having out of body experiences, and that my light body keeps returning to the place of trauma because I haven't yet healed my -" She lifted her hands, rabbit-earing the fingers of each one in symbolism of quotation marks - "emotional wounds." She rolled her eyes.

Out of body experiences? Light body?

Rachel had browsed through a few spiritual magazines in her dental practice's waiting room, but nothing more than that.

"Light body," she muttered to herself, attempting to resonate with the unfamiliar concept.

"It's not really me you're talking to though, because I have jack shit control over what I say, or what happens when I'm in that state. I just wake up in the morning, exhausted and sometimes sore, with vivid recollection of the encounter. If I'd had any say in it, I wouldn't have told you where I lived, or where to look for me. Nobody has ever seen my face, except you unfortunately. I don't need this bullshit. I'm happy now, and I just want a quiet life."

Rachel's head snapped up. "You cannot possibly be happy, because you have not healed your emotional wounds," she protested, full of unfounded passion. "I would be more than happy to help you. In fact, I give you my full permission to revisit the mansion, so that you can go about your healing process!"

Deep laughter growled low in Quinn's throat, before bubbling out of her mouth.

Rachel shrunk into herself, slightly offended at not being taken seriously.

"Do you moonlight as a shrink, Berry? What do you think this is? - Cable TV? This isn't some horror flick where the protagonist revisits the scene of trauma, and everything magically works out in the end. This is life; the scariest movie that there is."

"I am merely trying to help you, Quinn," Rachel raised her voice a little.

"You just want me out of your mansion."

"As a matter of fact, I have enjoyed having someone - or rather something - to talk to. I..." Frizz-fluffed praline tresses shrouded and obscured Rachel's tan face as she bowed her head. "I don't have any friends, except for my fathers."

Quinn watched the vulnerable celebrity carefully, and then folded her arms. "So then go out and get some."

It was Rachel's turn to chuckle, though it was one of absolute fatigue and misery. "You make it sound so simple. I have been attempting to fit in for the entirety of my life. First I was cast out because two men raised me, and then for my quirky fashion sense and my supposed big Jewish nose." She sighed heavily. "Then I was a social pariah because I talked too much. Then I was despised for my various talents, _and_ my unwavering ambition to make something of those said talents. Even those that I have worked alongside in the entertainment industry, do not seem to be able to take me." She peered up into seemingly apathetic hazel pearls. "People just do not like me!"

Quinn looked off to her left, shaking her head whilst wearing a smirk.

"What?" Rachel recoiled, her voice small and vulnerable, because somehow she knew that the blonde would give it to her without honey or sprinkles if there were, in fact, none deserved.

Quinn's eyes flickered down to the other chair that was poised at the small table. In one smooth confident motion, she swung it around one-hundred-and-eighty degrees and sat with the tall wooden back between her legs. "A lot of people love you. I mean how many concerts and tours have you sold out?"

The question had been rhetorical, leaving no room for debate, or beating one's self-esteem even further into the mud. Rachel knew what Quinn was doing, and it saw a small smile smooth out her frown. But it did not stop the accomplished star from confessing: "I'm terribly lonely, Quinn. My recent stint in hospital was a treat. That is how profoundly lonely I am."

Quinn stared curiously at the emotionally bare woman for a good five to ten minutes, the silence growing more and more uproarious with every passing second.

Then: "I'll come back to Henderdale Estate."

Rachel's eyebrows shot up.

"I need to heal, right?" A shrug of the shoulder.

"... Yes," the touched, and almost tearful, singer-actress breathed out, not once swaying her eyes away from Quinn's. "If you are certain about this decision then... thank you."

"Don't know what you're talking about," the blonde said, straight-faced, save the twinkle in her eye. "I'm doing this for me. A girl's gotta heal, right?"

* * *

**Drop me a reivew and tell me what you thought? Thanks for reading.**


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

"You fucked her, didn't you? Fuck sake!" Noelle threw her hands up in anguished hopelessness. "Why are you doing this to me?" she pleaded, watching her love stuff clothes into a red suitcase on wheels. Years of frustration were etched into the Italian woman's crumpled forehead, speaking an anguish like no other. "I love you! Can't you see that?"

Quinn stopped packing her belongings long enough to side-eye the woman that had been pestering her for a relationship for the better part of two years now. "What did I tell you the night we hooked up, Elle?"

"I don't give a fuck what you told me!"

"Shame. If you did, then maybe you'd get it," retorted Quinn. She eased on over to her open closet, and poked around the bottom, pulling out a black leather jacket. "I wondered where you had gotten to," she told it with a pleasantly surprised smile. "You are going to rehab with me too." It soared through the air and hit the bed with an almost imperceivable bounce.

Noelle scoffed and rolled her exotic brown eyes behind the blonde. "Do you think I'm an idiot?"

"Do you really want me to answer that?" Quinn shot back over her shoulder, never having stopped riffling through the bottom compartment of the closet for more lost gems.

"I know you're not going to rehab, you liar! You don't even have a drug problem!"

"Yeah, because you're with me just twenty-four-seven, aren't you? Come to think of it, I wouldn't put stalking past you."

With every article of clothing that she watched Quinn pack, Noelle grew more and more light-headed. She cupped her forehead with one hand, and rested the other atop the vanity dresser for support.

Quinn grew wary in the absence of Noelle's ranting. "You ok?" she asked after sparing a glance towards the grimacing woman.

"How come you only care when I'm dying?" the Italian model groaned.

"Who says I care? I just don't want the police asking me questions if you drop dead in my presence." With that said, the packing continued.

A percussion of loud knocks echoed throughout the apartment just then, followed by the melodic innocence of the doorbell's song.

Noelle, none soothed by the cheery tune, shook her dizziness off, glaring at Quinn. "Who's that? The latest slut coming by for a farewell fuck before you fuck off to wherever the fuck it is that you're fucking off to?"

Before Quinn could think of a barb, or even head out of the room to answer the front door, Noelle had sped down the hallway on her endless legs.

Quinn took the time alone to close her eyes and just breathe, her chest expanding and deflating beneath her baggy, tartan, long-sleeved, button-up shirt.

The night before had been another out of body adventure, and she was exhausted. Quick gulps of water had assisted a painkiller down her throat and into her system an hour ago, to eradicate the tenderness that had plagued her limbs when she'd woken up that morning.

Maybe this trip to her old home would help. Maybe there was something that she was supposed to do there, whatever the fuck it was.

At the sound of the front door slamming shut, and various nearing footsteps, she blew out one last deliberate breath, before looking towards an entering Santana and Brittany with a smirk.

"Who let the stalker in?" Santana asked, tossing a thumb back over her shoulder at the grumbling Italian model.

"I have no idea." Quinn shrugged and began to shove more things into a second suitcase on wheels. "She was standing at the foot of the bed staring at me when I woke up this morning."

That cracked Santana up into a fit of giggles that momentarily weakened her legs and arms, as was the same with Quinn.

"So then how did she get in?" Brittany, the tall and athletic blonde that had entered with Santana asked, genuinely stumped by the riddle. She glanced between her girlfriend and Quinn.

"Q's just joking, baby."

Noelle glared death at the three of them, before she pushed past Santana, grabbed her car keys from the vanity dresser, and swept out of the house like a passing tornado.

"Finally. I thought she'd never leave," Quinn mumbled to herself.

"That bitch is _fucked_ the next time I see her!" Santana exploded, her face set up like the most ominous of thunder. She folded her arms with aggressive petulance. "She wants to push past me? I'm gonna end her modeling career with my bare hands!"

"Santana," Brittany drawled softly, pouting.

The petite Latina huffed, and unfolded her arms grudgingly.

Brittany leaned in, pecking three quick kisses to her cheek.

The gesture saw Santana soften considerably. "Have you packed dental dams? You know how forgetful you can be," she asked Quinn in silent agreement to move past her anger.

"Somehow I don't think I'll be catching anything from Berry. She's definitely a virgin."

Santana quirked a simultaneously impressed yet disturbed eyebrow. "At twenty-six?"

"Yep." Quinn zipped the first suitcase on wheels, and sat on it, bouncing a couple of times with a perverted leer on her face.

Brittany grinned.

"So? STD's gotta start somewhere," Santana pointed out, ignoring her friend's crass antics. "Pack some God damn dental dams. Berries don't taste good when berries are infected."

Brittany frowned and looked at her girlfriend. "But remember that one time when we had that threesome, and you caught crabs? You still tasted good after, and I got to keep one of the lice as a pet."

Quinn threw her head back and released an uproarious laughter like no other. The mirror on the dresser trembled.

"Dammit it, Brittany!" Santana yelled, huffing out a large gruff sigh.

"Sounds like you need to take your own advice, S," Quinn teased, still tickling from what Brittany had just let slip.

"What, baby? It's true. And then I lost the lice, and cried the whole day."

Santana deadpanned, her eyes lifeless. "Quit telling Q about the crabs!"

"Ok. You don't have to yell!"

Eager to move on, Santana settled her peeved eyes on Quinn. "Going back's a pretty big step. What are you gonna do when you get there?"

The question caused Quinn to screw her mouth up to one side in thought, before she shrugged. "Don't know. I'm only going because I'm off of work sick at the moment, Berry's lonely, and -"

"You wanna fuck her," Santana interrupted.

Quinn rolled her eyes. "If sex happens, then great. But she seems pretty fragile. I'm not going to force myself on her if she doesn't want it."

"Everybody wants it when it comes to you," Brittany said innocently, a child-like smile adorning her face.

Quinn returned the smile. "Thanks B."

"Whatever, Q. Just don't forget to pack your strap-on." Santana smirked impishly. "Something tells me that Berry the prude likes it wild and rough, and we all know how much you love dicking bitches down."

Quinn couldn't refute that. There was something about being between a woman's legs, thrusting into her, having her leave red raw handprints, watching her eyes roll back into her head.

It was hot, and so utterly beautiful.

She stood up and held her arms out towards Brittany. "Let's group hug to my imminent departure, excluding Santana of course."

Brittany giddily jumped on the blonde with such force that they both collapsed back on the bed. Brittany held on though, kissing a giggling Quinn all over her face.

"Alright. Break it up before I set fire to my eyeballs, to get this Satanic image out of my head."

* * *

It was somewhat awkward for both Rachel and Quinn, sitting beside one another on the plane. Neither woman knew the other all that well, and yet they were on a flight together, with the prospect of sharing the same living space - for however long - staring them in the face.

It was mashugana, and unheard of. But they were doing it.

"What did you tell your friends and family about your decision to temporarily leave Manhattan?" Rachel leaned in close to whisper.

"My friends are my family, sort of, and I don't have to explain myself to anybody. I'm thirty-one," Quinn replied, positioning one earbud in her ear. She gazed down at her IPod, rapidly skipping songs as if looking for one in particular.

Silence once again fell like a curtain between them. Rachel frowned, immediately assuming that she'd done something to annoy her tenuous new friend. She'd come to learn that the story read that way no matter how many books she opened, and if that was the case then she was already cognizant of what would happen next.

She regarded the beautiful blonde beside her, ready to lunge into a diatribe about how Quinn did not have to be her friend if that was what was bothering her, but before she could part her lips there was a white rubber earbud sending her cross-eyed, and a rich hazel gaze focused upon her.

"It's clean," Quinn clarified at the petite celebrity's hesitation. She rolled her eyes for tradition's sake.

Rachel took the small speaker between her fingers, before beginning to take it to her ear.

But pale fingers caught her tan wrist.

Their eyes locked, Rachel's startled and expectant.

"I'm fucking exhausted, and about to revisit a place where a lot of shit went down in my life. So stop taking the silence personally."

A smile slowly grew out of Rachel's mouth as she nodded. Quinn was incredibly perceptive.

"You are incredibly perceptive," she let it be known.

"I know," the taller woman had no qualms about confirming. "That, or you're incredibly transparent. But just for future reference, I already like you. I even like some of your music, and I also think that your little seminar speeches, when you could just say a few words to get your point across, are endearing. So you don't have to fret if I get monosyllabic or quiet on you."

Barely able to keep her grin from blinding every passenger on the plane, Rachel nodded once, as though she had just been assigned a mission. "Noted."

Quinn chuckled softly at Rachel's ability to use monosyllables.

It was in that moment that the placated singer-actress truly saw the droop to Quinn's eyes, amongst the fatigue that wore on her other inexplicably perfect features. The sight prompted her to ask, "did you not get the benefit of much rest last night? You said that you were exhausted."

"I said that I was fucking exhausted. There's a difference."

Rachel shifted uncomfortably at the sound of Quinn's profanity. She had never been a fan of curse words, but it seemed like she was going to have to adjust that pattern of thought if she was going to be spending time with the no-nonsense blonde.

"And no, despite all of the sleeping pills that I popped to take me fully under, I still ended up in your living room," Quinn said. "Sometimes the pills help, and sometimes they don't, especially these days. My therapist told me to try meditation."

The small earbud that sat between Rachel's thumb and index finger hissed with distant music, as she pondered the fact that Quinn had been roaming her home last night whilst nobody had been occupying it. "Did anything interesting happen whilst you were in that... state? I did some research - well, a lot - and deduced that what happens in those experiences could possibly hold the key to your healing."

Quinn slumped back in the seat, and rolled her head to the left so that she could savor every twitch in Rachel's facial expression as she said: "I found your sex toys. I'd like to know what that has to do with my healing."

It took all of a nanosecond for the horrified star's skin to mimic a lobster's. Her eyes were large dark rings of humiliation. "But I - you -"

"Breathe, Berry. Breathe," Quinn chanted, deeply amused and warmed by how cute Rachel could be. "If it's any consolation, I only found two - the one with the gold stars on it, and the purple one."

That remark brought both of Rachel's hands up to her own face, the earbud forgotten. There, behind her palms, is where she remained for the next twenty minutes - despite Quinn encouraging the shriveling woman to come out and face her.

After a while, Quinn placed that second earbud in her left ear, and enjoyed the mystical sensations that Bonobo's music always created within her soul. She'd surmised that Rachel had gone to sleep, but that theory bottomed out when her peripheral vision caught the brunette dropping her hands to her lap.

Her pale thumb found the pause button on her IPod immediately.

"Finally decided to come out and play?"

She received mere silence in response.

"God, you celebrities are so rude."'

"I am no longer speaking to you," Rachel grumbled, peering out of her window.

"What, after only a couple of days? That must be a new record, even for me," the blonde teased, smirking, because the brunette was becoming more and more fuckable by the second.

Silence.

This was the only time that Rachel welcomed it.

Curiosity captured Quinn's interest. "So which button did I press? The sex button?"

Silence.

"So you're touchy about sex. I'm -"

Rachel abruptly span around. "Try the complete-and-total-violation-of-privacy button!" she whispered with as much power as a whisper would allow.

Quinn sighed, though there was still something mirthful about her. "It's not like I did it on purpose, Rachel. Maybe the key to me healing has something to do with you. I mean, you're the only one that can see my face."

Rachel's puffed out chest deflated. But no words came from her. She peered down into her lap.

Quinn watched her every move, studying her for any clue as to what she was thinking in that moment.

"Despite having lived my life in the cruel public eye for years now, I am a sensitive soul, Quinn, and I value my privacy," Rachel began, taking a deep breath - to calm herself, Quinn decided. "If you can help it, please do not breach my privacy again."

"That's absolutely fine. I won't. My light body is a pain in my ass too, if that helps. I mean, I have to guzzle coffee by the gallon, or take other drugs to keep myself awake. I sometimes forget things. I've had to stop working, because I am near enough useless without sleep. This is no picnic in the park. Something needs to happen during my reunion with Henderdale Estate, because _this_ isn't working."

Rachel was flabbergasted to learn the full spectrum of Quinn's physical hardships. The tall and beautiful blonde, from what Rachel had seen, always presented herself in such an aloof, well-put-together, charismatic fashion, when in fact she was falling apart at the seams. Rachel suspected that that was actually a part of Quinn's overall problem - the facade. But she didn't verbalize the thought, instead opting to curl her hand around the porcelain hand that rested in the other woman's lap.

"We will figure this out," she whispered softly.

"What did you tell your fathers about the fact that some stranger's going to be staying with you for a while?" Quinn asked, all the while staring at the tan fingers that were curled protectively around her own. It was a peculiar sight, and it generated a peculiar feeling right along with it.

"I spoke with them via the phone earlier, but I haven't told them anything. Whether they approve or not, I am also an adult, and they must learn to trust the values that they have instilled within me."

"I'm no ordinary stranger though," Quinn highlighted, still fixed upon their clasped hands. "I shot someone in premeditated cold blood. They're going to have a problem with that, regardless of the circumstances."

"Quinn, you are not going to be staying with my fathers. You are going to be staying with me, and I do not have a problem with your past. We all have one."

"You're not afraid that I'm going to kill you in the middle of the night?"

At the sight of those intense hazel eyes, Rachel swallowed noticeably. "W-Why would I be? You have not given me any reason to believe that you would allow me to come to any harm, and contrary to my small stature, I am very strong, not to mention very well versed in several martial arts. If push came to shove, you would not stand a chance. I would annihilate you."

The ins of Quinn's eyebrows pinched down as she hung her head in quiet but intense waves of laughter. Her entire torso quaked with mirth.

"What is funny?" Rachel queried, beginning to grow a little bit offended.

Quinn eventually lifted her head, peering straight ahead with a tickled smirk adorning her features. "You're an incredibly adorable little woman," she finally answered.

Rachel's chest puffed. "I resent that. I may be a little short, but strength and tall stature is always displaced by technique, skill, and -"

"Wow, you're argumentative. Calm down, sparky. I wasn't taking a dig at your physique. Quite the contrary. You're adorable. That was the message I was trying to convey, so receive it as it was intended to be taken, Berry." She rolled her head to her left to catch the last moments of the sensitive woman shrinking into her own shoulders.

"Oh..."

"Yeah, oh."

"Well... thank you, for the compliment," Rachel muttered, not really that accustomed to receiving praise for anything other than her singing and acting talent.

The two women met one another's gaze, dark and soulful eyes as timid as can be.

Quinn grinned. "Why is your space suit blushing?"


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

Quinn would never admit it, but her heart was jack-hammering, her palms bleeding sweat. She hadn't physically stepped foot in the mansion where she had once resided in seven years, and in approximately ten minutes - according to Rachel's limousine driver - she would return to the place that saw her blast her ex-husband's head to chunks of blood and mush with a Beretta.

With her aloof and guarded eyes, and her confident attitude, she may have carried on as though her past had left who she had once been intact. But she knew. She may have rolled her eyes, ever the cynic, when her psychiatrist had informed her of her still gushing emotional wounds, but... she knew. She was a complete fucking mess. Broken. She lusted, rather than loving. She spewed sarcastic barbs instead of speaking her truth. She self-medicated with all the letters of the alphabet in terms of drugs.

DMT, E, K, LSD, GHB.

She was a murderer, and that bothered her. As a child, when she'd sat and played priest at her two favorite Barbie's wedding, she had wanted to be everything. Successful, happy, in love with the perfect woman.

But not a murderer, and certainly not someone who had spent five wasted years behind bars with real cold-blooded killers. She had unwillingly lost her Sapphic virginity in prison, to a broad who had looked and acted just like Whitney Malone, the bull-dyke that had tried to win Rachel outside of ReVulva. In prison, this woman abused Quinn just as Noah had. So Quinn gathered herself, waited until the unsightly butch woman was otherwise occupied, and then drove one of the sharp makeshift knives that were readily available, for a price, straight into the chubby hand that had sadistically clutched her porcelain throat whilst the initial sexual assault had transpired.

Grassing was looked down upon in prison, and that was the only thing that saved the broken blonde from having more time added to her sentence.

The butch bitch never troubled her again though, and neither did anyone else.

"Are you alright?" Rachel asked from her seat beside her.

"Peachy," came the monosyllabic response.

Rachel grew worried, unable to help the hand that somehow found its way to the stoic blonde's back. She dragged it up and down in slow soothing motions, but when Quinn side-eyed her, the anxious star yanked her limb away. "I apologize, I -"

"Calm down, Berry. Everything's peachy."

Despite those words, Rachel trained her hands to remain still in her lap. She would scold her limb later.

* * *

Settled was not the right word to describe Rachel and Quinn once both of their belongings were shelved, closeted, and packed away in the towering mansion's various pockets.

There were things that remained up in the air, like the sleeping arrangements that they had yet to discuss, and the fact that Rachel would find Quinn staring, for obscene amounts of time, at certain walls and fixtures, as if she could see something that nobody else could.

Unsettled was much more accurate.

In her own home, Rachel gingerly wrapped her knuckles against the upstairs bathroom suite's plush door. For her it was a novelty to have to consider another's modesty - to know that another breathed on the other side of the door. But guilt simultaneously ate at her stomach, because since entering Henderdale Estate Quinn had not spoken a word, and now she had apparently locked herself within the confines of the bathroom.

"Quinn!" Rachel tentatively called, rattling out a few more knocks. "It is not my intention to pester you, but -"

The door suddenly swung open, revealing Quinn, who was stood in the doorway in just a white bra and black skinny jeans. "What do you want?"

Dark soulful eyes swallowed the creamy shoulders and defined abs on display.

"I- I..." Rachel stammered. She took her palm to the back of her neck, rubbing back and forth, just as she had grown up seeing her dad do whenever he felt uneasy.

Quinn smiled lazily.

Huffing in frustration, Rachel met Quinn's tired but twinkling hazel eyes, and commanded her words to flow. "I merely wanted to check up on you, to make certain that you were ok. You sort of vanished once you'd finished unpacking your belongings in the guest room. Is everything alright? Would you like me to assist you with anything?"

Quinn slowly brought her hand out from behind her back, an impish way about her. She unfurled her closed fist, and there in the middle of her palm lay an immaculately rolled blunt. "Maybe you can assist me with smoking this."

Rachel's eyes popped at what she saw, a scandalized gasp tumbling from her lips. "Quinn!" she whisper-shrieked, as if she thought that the police would show up if she spoke at full volume. "How did you get that through the airport?"

Quinn chuckled quietly. "Never you mind." She waved the blunt through the air, before Rachel's eyes, like a hypnotist. "Now are you coming out into the football field that is your garden to get high with me?"

"High?" the star shrieked, this time at full volume. "Have you lost your mind? I have never so much as swallowed an Aspirin. How do you expect me to assist you in smoking _that_? Secondly, my voice would surely suffer! Also, let's not forget that millions of little girls deem me to be a role model. What would they have to say if they knew that the woman in their favorite music videos was a stoner?"

Quinn slipped the blunt into her pocket, grabbed the plain black wife-beater that hung on the inside door handle, tugged it down over her head, and then stepped out into the hallway, pulling the bathroom suite door in gently behind her. She leaned her face in close to Rachel's, their noses almost touching. "Let's face it," she whispered, "If those little girls already know what it means to be a stoner, then quite frankly they're already fucked. Secondly, one little puff's not gonna bring down your entire singing career - you're not even on tour or recording at the moment. Thirdly, I expect you to go to your room, and put on one of your five-hundred-dollar robes, so that you don't freeze your adorable little ass off as you _assist_ me with getting high in your football field of a back garden."

Rachel folded her arms, defiant. "No!"

"Oooh. I love it when you get monosyllabic. Do it again!"

"I am not a performing seal!" Rachel objected, never quite catching that the blonde was being sardonic.

"Please?" Quinn drawled, straight-faced. "I never beg, but I'm begging right now. Come get stoned with me."

Rachel scoffed. "Rachel Barbra Berry does not get 'stoned,' and I was under the impression that you were exhausted. Marijuana is a depressant, from my understanding."

Quinn looked to the ceiling and closed her eyes, drawing in one deep breath, before returning her eyes to Rachel's. "Doesn't get much more _depressing_ than standing in the hallway that I was beaten and sexually assaulted in." She grinned wide and sarcastic, then swiftly deadpanned. "Now, I am going out into your garden to bake the hell out of my brain, so that I don't have to think. _You_," she said, pointing an irritated finger just inches away from Rachel's chest, "can do whatever the hell you like!"

She left the petite celebrity standing there in the middle of the long hallway wearing a hurt frown.

A matter of ten minutes saw Rachel slipping out of the patio doors that led out into the vast land that constituted her garden. She pulled her silk robe more snug against her body, as a body of gentle breeze rushed at her sternum.

Quinn glanced at the figure that shuffled out of the night's shadows, and allowed a baked grin to rise up out of her lips as she caught sight of the fluffy white bunny-rabbit ears that protruded up and out of Rachel's slippers. "Nice footwear."

"After you yelled at me upstairs, like I am a dog, I shouldn't speak to you," Rachel mumbled. The bridge of her nose crinkled when ribbons of Marijuana-scented smoke whooshed up her nostrils. She batted the air before her face, as if that would do anything. "That stuff smells awful."

Quinn took the arm that wasn't assisting the slow dwindling blunt to and from her lips, and slung it across Rachel's shoulders. She pulled the smaller woman in close and intimate. "I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Here goes: I only yell if I give a shit. It's when I don't yell that you should be offended. See the compliment in that?"

Rachel scoffed, but couldn't help but be slightly charmed by the troubled blonde's ability to talk her way out of anything.

"Here," Quinn whispered, gesturing for the star to take a hit of the blunt. "Just one puff."

Rachel eyed it warily. She'd seen the movies - hell, she'd starred in them. Marijuana caused hallucinations and all sorts of other dubious side effects.

Quinn rolled her glossy reddening eyes. "If you didn't want any, you wouldn't have followed me out here."

"I merely followed you out here because -"

"Just try it. You'll like it."

...

"If anything happens to me as a result of this, I will hold you _fully_ accountable," Rachel reluctantly submitted, grudgingly snatching the blunt.

Quinn watched with narrowed eyes that glimmered prettily with rapt attention, as the little star slowly took the blunt between her lips and tentatively inhaled...

A bray of slap-knee giggles befell her the instant that Rachel's chest puffed, and a fit of intense coughs tore from her throat.

"There there, Rachel," she soothed, rubbing the wide-eyed coughing brunette's back...

Twenty minutes later, a stoned Rachel Berry collapsed on her queen-sized bed, swiftly followed by a still sniggering Quinn.

Both lay there, just breathing in the silence. It was the kind of silence that Rachel didn't mind. The kind that was pregnant with the potential of another's voice.

She felt as though life had blanketed her in a calm warm ambiance. She'd felt that way since taking her second puff ever of Marijuana.

Life had provided her with a friend whom, despite her troubles, had the potential to become a lifelong fixture in her life.

Out of nowhere - at least it seemed that way to Quinn, who had propped herself up on her side to gaze at the beautiful celebrity - Rachel grinned widely.

"What are you grinning at, Berry?" curiosity caused Quinn to ask.

Rachel hummed a stream of quiet sniggers. "You," she said, side-eyeing the blonde, "are a terrible influence. I've known you a matter of days, and I'm already a - what do you call it? - a weed fiend."

More sniggers followed.

"Despite what the media puts out there about weed, a little weed never hurt anybody. In fact, there are medical benefits to it. If you'd just done some research instead of buying into tell-lie-vision, then you'd know that."

Rachel back-handed Quinn's shoulder, though not hard enough to elicit a sound. "Oh hush."

"Five, four, three, two -"

"Why do you feel the need to do a countdown? - Never mind. I must eat something; I am absolutely famished!"

Rachel jumped up from the bed, and headed for the door, the sound of her eager feet pattering down the luxurious swirling staircase becoming more and more distant with every second.

"That's why I felt the need for a countdown," Quinn quietly said to herself, smirking.

Then she remembered where she was, and that smirk quickly faded out of existence.

"Shit," she mumbled.

As her psychiatrists had said: 'If you don't deal with it, don't worry. It'll get bigger. Then you will have to deal with it. Cancer is not the food you eat, or the lifestyle you live. It is the systematic failure to deal with emotional turmoil or whatever is eating away at you, as is the same with any ailment - any illness. Every paper cut. Every stubbed toe. If you don't deal with it, don't worry. It'll get bigger.'

Quinn screwed up her face at the memory of her psychiatrist's words. He was right though, the asshole.

When she had gotten out of prison, Jesus Christ himself couldn't have stopped her from running away from the shambles that had become of her life. She told herself that the pink streaks in her hair - that had since grown out - and the complete image rehaul, and the attitude revamp, were all a part of her becoming the woman that she always should have been. Not even in prison did she deal with the fact that she would always know what it was to be raped, to be told what to wear, to be beaten... to be a murderer.

She had moved to Manhattan, taken every drug under the sun, and assumed the role of God in the city's lesbian scene.

But the further she ran, the harder her light body tugged on that invisible cord that connects all living things to it's soul.

Now here she was, right back where she'd started.

"Deal with it," she whispered.

"I'm back," Rachel sang melodiously, a cheery energy about her as she shuffled into the room, her arms stacked with snacks.

Quinn smiled up at the adorable little woman, though it failed to reach her eyes.

Oblivious to the shift in Quinn's mood, Rachel tossed packets of biscuits, potato chips, and gummy treats to the bed. "My stash of vegan-friendly junk for when it's that time of the month, and my cravings kick up," she explained happily. She backed up a few steps, and then made a sprint towards the bed, leaping onto it with a giddy squeal.

Whether she was in the mood or not, Quinn couldn't help but release a soft chuckle at the endearing sight before her. But the mirth didn't last long. "Rachel, I think I'm gonna head off to bed."

As if the record had scratched to a halt, Rachel quit bouncing up and down on the firm mattress, and regarded the somber woman in front of her. She blinked, once, twice. "I know that we have yet to discuss the sleeping arrangements, and that you have already unpacked your things in one of the guest rooms, but a glimmer of something inside of me was hoping that you would sleep in here... with me." Her tangled tussled hair fell into her face when she focused down upon the duvet's patterns.

"Are you sure you want a notoriously promiscuous lesbian sleeping next to you? I might get handsy." Quinn punctuated that with somewhat of a lecherous quirk of the eyebrow.

Rachel peered at Quinn through her curtain of mussed hair, her smirk threatening to fully mold her mouth. "Don't be ridiculous. Why would I discriminate? My fathers are homosexual men. Also, this is your first night returning here. I would rather be present if anything should happen during the night."

Without a word, Quinn got up off of the bed and unzipped her skinny jeans. She tugged them down her beautiful, toned, cream legs with little difficulty, and then kicked them to the floor. A pair of baggy grey boxers maintained the modesty of her lower half.

"They're more comfortable than panties," she answered, for the question that Rachel's dark and greedy eyes begged. "Gotta let your parts breathe, you know?" She shoved the snacks that messily adorned the bed to one side, and slipped in under the duvet. "Night."

"So do you not want any snacks?"

"No thanks."

"Are you alright, Quinn?"

"Yes. Thanks."

Rachel gathered the snacks and heaped them on top of her dresser, before slipping out of her robe, and sliding into the bed.

She lay there, still, just listening to the woman beside her breathe.

"If you think any louder I'm going to need earplugs, Berry."

"I was actually just thinking about the fact that if I were in a relationship, then I would not like that person to share a bed with another."

Subtle, Quinn thought.

"Well," she sighed, "you don't have to worry about any crazy bitches coming after you. I'm single. Always single."

"Splendid!" Rachel let slip, later realizing how that could be construed. "N-Not splendid because - well. It is splendid because -"

"Your gay is showing."

Rachel sat up. "I am not gay, Quinn!"

The blonde adjusted her head so that it sank into the plush pillow at a comfier angle. "Your-gay-for-_Fabray_ is showing then," she corrected herself, finally allowing her eyelids to fall shut.

She listened to Rachel huff, and imagined that her chest was puffed as it often was whenever the brunette worked herself into a frenzy.

"I would date anybody, given that chemistry, love, and respect were foreseeable key components in the relationship," Rachel protested.

"I guess that rules me out then."

"What?" the smaller woman balked. "Why?"

Quinn smirked, her eyes still closed. "We only have one of those components. Our chemistry could set this mansion on fire, and burn through it like it was nothing. That's why."

"To clarify, are you saying that you do not respect me?" Rachel challenged, gearing herself up for affront.

"You know, this really isn't the kind of pillow talk that I'm used to."

"I will ignore your lewd innuendo to repeat: do you not respect me?"

"I've known you for days, but I guess I do," Quinn finally answered, her voice grainy and slow in its quality.

"But you know of my career and how established I am within the entertainment industry. Does that not warrant respect?"

"Anybody can suck a few dicks, or sign their soul away to the devil, inking it in their own blood. That first one's called giving head to get ahead."

"We have already been through this discussion once befo-"

"Rachel! I'm delirious with fatigue. I could say anything. Don't pay any attention to anything that I may say after these next few sentences. Yes, I respect you, and we have great chemistry. I don't think I'm capable of falling in love. So, that still rules me out as far as what you're looking for in a romance. I'm now going to attempt to sleep - to see if me being here has any bearing on my sleeping experience. I'll report any findings back to you in the morning. Goodnight. Sweet dreams. This is Quinn Fabray signing off."

"This is Rachel Berry signing off," came the quiet response.

It warmed Quinn all the way down to the tips of her toes.

* * *

**Thank you for the reviews for the last chapter. Drop me a few for this one, and let me know what you thought.**


End file.
